


Instabilities Were Forgotten

by debtdoctor



Series: It Shall Sweep Dimensions [3]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Eldritch Abomination Cecil, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debtdoctor/pseuds/debtdoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written post-Cassette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instabilities Were Forgotten

Carlos calls Cecil ten minutes after the show ends.  
  
"Can I come over?"  
  
Cecil isn't sure. He wants to forget. He wants to remember. He wants both and neither and nothing in-between.  
  
"Of course."  
  
He answers the door to let Carlos in, and Carlos gives him one of those full body hugs. The kind that are a little too tight, and last a little too long, but Cecil doesn't mind, could never mind.  
  
It just means Carlos is trying to tell him something he can't find the words to explain.  
  
Cecil knows what he means.  
  
They sit on the couch together; Cecil knits something with too many color changes for anyone's liking, and Carlos shoots back and forth emails with someone about his research grant. They ignore the television playing softly in the background.  
  
Eventually Carlos sits back and sighs. "Do you want to talk about it?"  
  
"No," Cecil says decidedly.  
  
They don't quite spend the rest of the evening in silence. Cecil gives advice regarding phrasing in Carlos's emails, and Carlos talks about the orange goo that's been spilling from his toaster for two weeks, despite three calls to the exterminator.  
  
Cecil finishes another row of his colored cotton monstrosity, and goes to get a glass of water. Carlos clears his inbox before he realises Cecil hasn’t come back yet.           

He finds Cecil in the bathroom, door open, just staring at the covered mirror.  
  
Carlos guides him away with a hand on the shoulder, and asks "Which chord patterns in the weather forecasted fuchsia breezes today?"  
  
He gets a confused look, but it's thankfully the "Oh, Carlos, I forget you're new to Night Vale" kind of confused, and not the "The sounds that came out of your mouth did not convey meaning to me" kind.

They sit closer on the couch than before, and Carlos brings up data on his computer and explains distribution functions and Cecil pays enough attention to ask questions about the graphs and he explains the how the rhythms of The Weather play to the rhythms of the weather, and the colors just bleed through. Eventually they get distracted and there’s kissing, and tantalizing hands sneak slowly up shirts, and that’s nice.

Cecil rests his head on Carlos’s shoulder with an arm around his waist and ignores ignores ignores the way the computer sucks a hole in the aural shifts on the Third.

He isn't sure what he remembers anymore. Europe. That was real. Or at least, it was supposed to be. It was real enough. His mother was real, and Leonard Burton was real too.  
  
He can't remember if he's always had his tattoos. He can’t remember when he first learned he shouldn’t look above the Third Plane. That, certainly, was never something his mother taught him. He can't remember if he's always had three eyes, nor if he ever actually interned at the station. He can’t remember keening at Management three hours a day, but he'd seen the gradual effects of it on his own interns. They'd look different. Just different.

He can't remember ever looking different, or even knowing what he looked like at all.  
  
He can't remember covering the bathroom mirror in his apartment.  
  
But Carlos is there, and he asks questions he should already know the answers to, and it's enough to bring Cecil into the here and now, and to push off the things he shouldn't think about. He shoves them into a corner, and as time goes on, he'll restrict that corner more and more, until at last it is so small he doesn't remember it ever being there to begin with.  
  
Carlos spends the night, and Cecil is grateful for someone to cling to.


End file.
